


The Prisoner of Zen, Da?

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7, The Prisoner of Zenda
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-08
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:27:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29910726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: Jenna gets to lead a mission of her own, a rip-roaring romantic adventure. Rashel and Blake's clone get to unload an unwelcome houseguest.
Relationships: Flavia/Rudolf Rassendyll
Comments: 9
Kudos: 4
Collections: The House Always Sins





	The Prisoner of Zen, Da?

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to "Orphan Blake"

Part I (From the Memoirs of Rudolph Rassendyll)

I’m the idlest hound who ever lived, at least if you ask my sister-in-law. And really, with a position in the world as an Alpha, and enough money to live comfortably, why should I do anything other than just what I pleased? So I had no claims on me when I decided, idly enough, to go to Ruina for the coronation. 

I bore a resemblance to the King-to-Be, Rudolph V. Though we were far from identical, we shared a length of lanky limb, a long nose, and bright red hair. I once won a “silver” cup at a hunt ball, for Best Costume, togged out in a comic-opera uniform with stacks of gold braid. Of course the silver bit flaked off the cup within two months.

I wasn’t quite rich enough for my own spacecraft, although I needn’t travel in Steerage Stasis. But Ruina is a rather quiet place, and the liners don’t put in there very often. The tourist ships were all booked up (and I wouldn’t have liked to be cheek-by-jowl with a lot of grocers and stockbrokers’ clerks anyway). I nearly gave up on the idea. If I had obeyed that impulse, I should have forfeited the adventure of a lifetime.

The most practicable berth was on the Galaxy Princess — arriving at Ruina a full week before the coronation. I called at the Consulate and obtained a ticket for the coronation, went hunting in a splendid virgin forest and bagged a twelve-point Vouster buck, and still found myself at loose ends in the capital city.

Heaven knows I’m not one of those greenery-yallery artist chaps, but I’ve been known to carry a sketchbook (sometimes the Embassy will ask a chap for a sketch of some fortifications, and it makes a handy cover to have a dozen or so views of racing torrents and spreading yews). Even, if there’s a bit of extra room in my kit, a small paintbox.

So there I was, on my hind legs in front of a waterfall, trying to capture the sparkle of the lacy silver spume. Just a few meters away, a deuced pretty girl sat on a folding canvas chair, carefully painting the striations of the gray sky. She had a smear of green paint on her cheek, near her adorable tip-tilted nose. Evidently she must have been Somebody, because between her and the line of pixelazzi was a crag of a man I deduced must have been her bodyguard.

Silently, I offered her my handkerchief, with a bit of turpentine on it. As I gently touched it to her cheek, a thrill coursed all through my body. The silence did not last long. She said she had a house nearby (as it turned out, a perfect jewel box... of a palace) and had high hopes of the landscape she was painting, she knew just the spot for it, over the mantelpiece. (In the servants’ loo.)

The next night was a grand ball in anticipation of the coronation. I was having a glass of distinctly second-rate champagne when two heralds tootling trumpets nearly as long as themselves, hung with banners that flapped as they blew. The guests hustled to form into ranks, and then the major-domo bellowed, “Prince Rudolph!” and a split-second later (appropriate, because she held his arm but managed to be a half-step behind him) shouted “and the Princess Flavia!” My jaw dropped, and my eyes watered when the chandeliers caught the quarter-kilo engagement ring on her hand. My heart broke.

I found out later that the Elphbergs always marry their cousins, which could explain a lot, really.

The Ruinese make a devilish kind of brandy out of — heaven knows what. After quite a few glasses of champagne at the ball, I stumbled into a rough tavern and imbibed a cask or so of the brandy. So I felt fairly rough the next morning, as the inn servant hammered down the door with an engraved invitation. It was at Princess Flavia’s last At-Home before the coronation. Although she spent most of the year at her schloss in the Blauschnee Forest, she had a lovely little chateau in the capital city. Although it was partially furnished with noble antiquities, there were many new things, that must have been a reflection of Flavia’s exquisite taste. 

For the sake of an occasional glimpse of her, I stood around for four mortal hours, making chit-chat with the Great and Good of Ruina. It was all worth it, when, as the crowd began to thin, Flavia herself came over to me, gently touched her fingers to my arm, and asked me to stay behind. 

A trim maid in livery with a lace cap and apron brought a silver tea tray. Flavia herself poured out the tea. 

“I am so glad you could come.”

“As if wild horses could keep me away!”  
She looked down, giving far more attention to the bottom of her teacup than it deserved. 

“You know what will happen after the coronation, of course.”

I thought it was a mean trick not to marry her beforehand so she could be crowned then as well, but I could hardly object to anything that put off the evil day just a little longer.

“Yes, my princess. But do you love him?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I don’t care a straw for him. I suppose some of these political marriages are polite and satisfying enough. But our king is a dipsomaniac, a roué, a cheater at cards, a perfect beast of a man in every way. If he weren’t a king no decent woman would look at him twice. In fact, if a woman who was not absolutely the next thing to an outcast were to wish to marry him, her friends would do everything in their power to dissuade her. But since he is...”

I decided to pack my traps and head back home before the wedding (evidently the plan was to have the coronation baked meats coldly furnish forth the marriage tables) so I could sulk in peace. Well, if I could stay out of the way of my sister-in-law. That’s all I knew. As they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans. I sat at a café table, consulting my Bradshaw for the next flight out, when a deuced pretty blonde (on Ruina, they seemed to grow on berry bushes) sat down at my table. 

“Don’t look surprised,” she said. “I’m an offworlder, and I know that Princess Flavia is in terrible danger.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Saving Princess Flavia aligns with my interests. Look, we oughtn’t to talk about this in a public place. Can we go somewhere more private?”

I started to think that this was getting better and better, but then I reminded myself of my chivalric duty to my darling Flavia. So we went back to Flavia’s chateau. 

“Your Grace,” the girl said, “I’m Space Captain Tassini. I go here and there, doing business...”

Flavia and I glanced knowingly at one another. A Free Trader, of course. Not a reputable lot, but they often learn useful things, so perhaps she could be trusted.

“I have learned that there is a Federation plot to prevent you from marrying the king. They want Ruina to demonstrate its loyalty by placing Space Commander Servalan on the throne. And, of course, as you know, that would be an absolute disaster.”

Flavia and I shrugged. I’m sure my brother would know all about her, but I’d never heard of the girl. Flavia tilted her adorable chin up. 

“My loyal retainers will prevent that.”

“The Federation will stop at nothing,” Tassini said. “Even assassination.”

“They’ll have to go through me first!” I exclaimed, daring to put my arm around Flavia’s shoulders and pressing her to me. A galvanic thrill went through my frame as Flavia’s arm slipped around my waist.

“Like a hot knife through butter,” Tassini said. 

“But why come here to say this, unless you’ve an idea of what we should do?” Flavia said. Her voice trembled a little, but she was resolute. 

“Let them kick at an open door,” Tassini said. “Mr. Rassendyll, take her away. Take her away tonight. Go home. There’ll be no reason to harm her if she does nothing to interfere with Servalan’s marriage.”

She pulled a ring off her finger. Flavia and I couldn’t help wincing a little: the large unmatched colored stones were so vulgar. 

“Go to the Consulate and marry her tonight. I’ll be the witness. I’ve got a shuttle that won’t get you all the way back, but I can take you to Marcrine, you can easily get a commercial flight there.”

“But what about the fate of my planet?” Flavia asked. “Won’t my people suffer if this awful Civilian person becomes their queen?”

“That’s just what she isn’t,” Tassini said. “Although sometimes we call her the Seville Orange. But you needn’t be concerned. She will never become queen. “My loyal retainers will have something to say about that.” 

II Jenna Stannis’ Diary  
It wasn’t much of a mission, but god knows it was all mine, and it felt good to be in charge even if it wasn’t quite the Premier Division. I wasn’t quite sure what Blake was off doing for the main event. In fact I never did find out; when I got back one was brooding and one was sniping, so I had that sense when you cross the interplanetary date line and get back right when you left.

I had the job of persuading Princess Flavia to do a bunk and leave the field free for Servalan — and then for us to ring in Fidelma as a very convincing substitute. Of course they looked alike, and no one in Ruina had any experience of Servalan so they wouldn’t know if she acted peculiar.

If I’d met her under normal circumstances — say, if she needed seven thousand cartons of popperpears sent the long way round to avoid the tariff — I might have liked her well enough. But it may be that I’ve been hanging about with Blake for too long. I had to force myself to curtsey to that jumped-up little mannequin. And although she was quick enough to see sense, her fancy-man took a deal of convincing not to stage a heroic stand to defeat the plot. And if he did that, it would mean that he went through all that carry-on to get his girl married to someone else. And considering that it was someone else she despised, it was a typical masculine move. All about his noble self-sacrifice, nothing about the girl he left carrying the can. 

In the end, though, I’ve talked a Customs and Excise official into believing that forty-year-old Scotch was blackcurrant cordial, so I managed. And, speaking of self-sacrifice, I had to throw in quite the best ring from the treasure room into the bargain.

Once the Rassendylls were sorted, Liberator flew me close to Ibbett North, the planet where Avon had chucked Fidelma. I took a shuttle, of course. Rashel and Blake’s clone were glad to see me. As the saying goes, fish and guests begin to stink after three days, and I don’t think Fidelma’s visit was an entire success. 

Rashel stood up when I came in, waving her hand to switch off the mellocast. 

“It’s Jenna, dear,” she said. “You remember? From the Liberator.” Blake’s clone walked in, giving me quite a turn. Like Blake, he turned his feet out when he walked, but there was something subtly different about his body language. His voice was rather higher, and his hair was cropped close. 

“Jorg, Jenna has a favor to ask.” When she saw the confusion on my face, she said, “Well, the Clonemasters just called him Eudoxynius, and that doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, does it? So we settled on Jorg Beal, like the Federation Street character.” 

“Oh, Feddy!” I said. “I haven’t watched that for ages.” 

“We’ve seen all the episodes half-a-dozen times, we don’t have a lot of tapes,” she said. “It’s quite an old programme, so I don’t think they named him to make people to think about, you know, your Blake. He must have been in Junior School when it was first shown. It’s just a coincidence.” 

The planning stage for this caper was enjoyable, because for once the daily bitchfest was about something. I’d say Blake won the round, reminding us that he knew they’d need a spare Servalan for something sooner or later, although Avon did have a point that we got Fidelma’s crewcut out of our hair before someone throttled her. 

Fidelma was on board with the plan right away, well, she would be, wouldn’t she? And Rashel soon agreed, if only to get back her privacy and at least some of her possessions. I got the impression that where Rashel went, Jorg followed. So that was sorted.

I was able to establish a Tariel downlink, so we settled down to binge-watch Sewing Under Servalan. It’s a bannedcast, but barely. It’s well known that Servalan enjoys watching clips of herself, and sometimes even tweaks an accessory or a sleeve based on the commentary. They made quite a meal out of the wedding designs: all the portfolios submitted to get the contract (and gossip about the back-handers offered), purloined or leaked sketches for the competing designs for the rehearsal dinner, gown, and going-away. She was going away all right, if they only knew.

It cost a bloody fortune, but we got a line-for-line copy made overnight. Well, the crystals were bits of plastic rubbish, not the advertised Cernuvian adamants (although I wouldn’t put it past Servalan to have made the swap on her gown). Of course the Federation doesn’t go a ton on religion, but King Rudy put his foot down — a cathedral wedding or nothing. Servalan gave in when she saw that the Civil Union Registry Office had all the charm of a public convenience and half the sanitation. 

Jorg agreed to make a few appearances in places in the capital city where he’d be sure to be picked up on Federation surveillance scans. That diverted the attention of a few Space Command operatives, who naturally always just missed him and couldn’t figure out his trajectory, because he didn’t have one. 

Well, the wedding day arrived, and by dint of extensive bribery and then that one time I dangled a Federation operative out the window by his ankles to confirm some details of the route, we knew precisely how Servalan planned to get to the cathedral.

We waited until the coach stopped at the Monopasium Stag Inn for a pit stop. The twelve Decima bridesmaids, in gold-embroidered beige lace with matching mobcaps, had to straggle behind to keep Servalan’s train out of the mud. Of course she never got there. We leapt out, and our Decimas and her Decimas got into a ding-dong. Fidelma and Servalan leapt at each other and started as vicious a catfight as you could have while keeping your giant meringue of a wedding gown intact for your impending royal wedding. The only problem is that as they chased each other and pulled as much hair as could be located under a twelve-foot lace veil on top of someone who cut her hair with lawnmower they kept changing places until I hadn’t a clue which one was which. 

The pair of them quickly realised that they weren’t each other’s only problem. They pushed themselves up, dusted themselves off the best they could. They stood there pointing at each other, shrieking “Shoot her!” which, of course, is what you would have expected from a pair of Servalans. And once the real one twigged who she was being kidnapped by, she said she was just an innocent clone. And then I asked which one of them wanted to marry King Rudolph, but that wasn’t the right question. Of course they both put their hands up. I considered Waving up Avon to ask for some intimate sexual detail about him that only Fidelma would know, but I knew that was as much as my life would be worth. 

Rashel, rolling her eyes as only someone with a lifetime as a slave to get her fed up with everything, pulled out the Imipak weapon and popped off a round at each of them. I nodded. Good strategy, that: it would tell us which one was the real Servalan. She’d already been marked, and expected to drop in her tracks. Fidelma hadn’t a clue, she just stared. Servalan’s Decimas, sensing that something was up, took advantage of the confusion to sheer off. I wonder what they made of it at the nearest inn when a Decima dozen, somewhat the worse for wear, turned up. 

And then Servalan started laughing as hysterically as she had screamed, because she was acutely not dead and was beginning to suspect it might be chronic. (Later on, I took a look at the Imipak weapon, and it had an Egrorian Enterprises label. I tarielled them up and apparently they’ve got a rotten reputation and scarcely a single positive customer review.) 

Servalan took off at a run, with Fidelma chasing her, and we lost sight of them behind a clump of trees. So there we were again, with two of them. I made a snap decision, and shot both of them.

Oh, with a tranquiliser cartridge, of course. Obviously I’ll do it, if I must, but there’s no joy for me in killing. After all the bother we’d been through, and once I was finally in charge, I needed to deliver a Servalan and get her hitched. As they snored away, and as I wondered if clones have the same fingerprints as each other, Rashel nudged me in the side. You could tell she was down in the dumps about the weapon fiasco, although I can’t really say it’s her fault. She said that the Clonemasters always put in an ident chip, so I waved my teleport bracelet about until one of their armpits beeped. 

I was a bit busy getting Servalan stowed with Rashel and Jorg for temporary safekeeping. We considered locking her in the wine cellar, but they’re not the most secure, are they? The point is to keep the butler from drinking all the best vintages, not to keep the inmates from escaping. So we shoveled a bit out of the coal cellar, dumped her in there, and put a couple of sheets of corrugated iron on top too heavy for her to shift.

I caught up on the vizzes afterwards, and apparently the wedding was a sensation. Fidelma preened, and Rudy was drunk as a skunk but she contrived to keep him upright through the ceremony and the banquet. Too bad he had on a tailcoat and tight white breeches, she couldn’t get her hand up her arse like the puppet he is. There was some question about why the magnificent wedding dress was splashed with whatever mud our Decimas couldn’t scrape off in the carriage while they waited for Fidelma to wake back up. The Feeb rang in an anthropologist to explain that it was an ancient Ruinan custom linked to the Fertility of the Land.

I’m not sure if the Federation knew then that Rudy married the wrong Servalan, (and if it’s even legal if you don’t think you’re marrying the person you are). Or perhaps they didn’t know then, but twigged later on. But either way, they didn’t care. We found out about the plot from the cipher machine from Centero. I suppose that it was Servalan’s idea to begin with. But I don’t think there was much opposition from the Federation muck-a-mucks. On the other hand, perhaps the Central Committee thought it up as more expedient and profitable (and less risky) than assassinating her, and then they sold it to her. 

Servalan had enough self-knowledge — just — to be aware she’d made a lot of enemies, but she very much overestimated how beloved she was. (Herpes was more beloved.) It was a face-saving move on all sides. A tinpot king got to top the news broadcasts for a moment. Servalan got to add a new title. The Federation got to see the back of her. She’d staked her career on things she promised but couldn’t deliver: she didn’t have the Liberator, or Orac, or the Imipak weapon or, well, us. 

It might be Blake’s influence again, but really, I think being queen of a mudball like this is a pretty crap job. About all you do is swan around in an enormous hat opening hospitals. I don’t think the evidence showed that Servalan even owned more than the one hat. So I don’t know if Fidelma will enjoy the job, but I can’t break my heart over whether she does or not. 

And I suppose we should simply have bumped off Servalan when we got the chance, but none of us really had the stomach for it. Zen located an isolated settlement of religious fanatics conveniently in the middle of nowhere. Since they believed that just about everything was a deadly sin, but didn’t trust the Heavenly Powers to take care of it, quite the best building in the settlement was the grim limestone tower of the prison, with a heavy iron grate over every window. It’s an achievement to make an eight-story building out of nothing but dungeons. They agreed to keep an eye on her. All I can say is, I wish them the joy of it. Especially if they’ve got a 77-year-old eunuch who used to be a jiu-jitsu champion to guard her. Or at least five of them — three shifts a day plus weekends.

Part III John Felton’s Testament of Faith  
They told me that she was a Jezebel, and that I should not believe a single word she said. But if only you could see the light in her eyes, when she told me that, when she stood in the Cathedral during the wedding rehearsal, the Light of God came into her heart. All of a moment, she was horrified that the Federation has persecuted Believers like us, and repented the part she had taken in such impiety. 

At first, she knew nothing of the True Faith, but in the long hours of my watch over her cell, I have had the honor and privilege of instructing her in Scripture. 

Although the false impostor married the King, my darling says that betrothal is every bit as sacred as marriage. So she reminds me that she and I (a humble artisan) could never wed, and of course she would never stoop to impurity even if I were to succumb to the snares of Temptation that Satan has strewn in my path. She has placed her lovely, graceful hand on my arm and told me, in her voice of music, that I must stand to her in the place of an older brother. Yet my thoughts, my dreams of her, are not those of a brother, nor those of a man who hopes to see Salvation. I do know the proper feelings of a brother, because I do have a sister, and Fate, or rather, the Workings of Grace, have given her an important role in history.

By a Providence the Lord has provided, although Servalan’s beauty exceeds Myrtle’s as much as the pinnacle of Mount Zion exceeds the roof-tree of a shepherd’s hut, yet to an ignorant eye, they look somewhat alike. Soon, after my quarterly pay has been issued, and I have gathered such other funds as I can, my sister and her husband will come to the capital for the Harvest Festival. And, although I shall do wrong, I am sure the Lord will forgive me, because I shall suffer for my crime on Earth, whether or not the crime is detected. Yet I shall be steadfast. I shall not draw back at the moment of crisis.  
I know I shall never see my beloved again, once I have freed her from durance, and supplied her with other wherewithal to escape and assume the identity of Myrtle Sleer.


End file.
